Welcome to Part Two of my European travel recap! Part One featured the London portion of our trip. If you read that one, then you know our friends Niall and Loren came to spend the last day in London with us. The next part of our journey was to go back to Wales with them to Niall’s house, and then from there we took a train to Salisbury, England, which was where we were staying for the main event: the wedding at Stonehenge! I’ll take you through each part separately from here, so keep scrolling for specific details about each place. [Read more…]

I always say this but it’s so true: the best thing about blogging is the friends you make over the internet. Back in April I had the chance to hang out with some of those friends in the Twin Cities. After meeting Abby from Heart of a Baker in person back in October, we talked about trying to go to one of the Pinch of Yum Food Photography Workshops together. Well that opportunity presented itself when they announced their spring classes and we were both free to attend their first (slightly more advanced) workshop focused on style and branding at the beginning of April. We were both ridiculously excited, texting each other frantically as we ordered our tickets in the first second possible so they wouldn’t sell out before we got to them. [Read more…]

One of the first meals that Robert and I ever cooked together after I moved in with him was the “brussel leaf and baby spinach saute” from Sprouted Kitchen‘s first book. I had bought it shortly before the move, so we ended up cooking from it quite a bit in those first few months of living together, and it remains one of our favorites. We ate that salad in the “front room,” AKA the “front porch” (Robert always called it that by accident), or what is technically our living room. Or rather, we ate it in the room that BECAME our living room. Before it turned into the lovely space where we eat dinner, watch movies, host dinner parties and where I shoot my blog photos, it was a room with a pile of boxes Robert had never unpacked since moving in, along with a card table, two odd chairs and just a random sconce on the wall for lighting. But we ate this amazing salad in there that we had made together, and in addition to helping Robert realize that he loves brussels sprouts with a passion, this salad was also a sign that living together was going to work out just fine, and if nothing else we would surely eat well. We went from never eating brussels sprouts to eating them at least once a week during that first fall and winter of living together. The original Sprouted Kitchen Cookbook is important to us for reasons like that. [Read more…]

I know February is a short month, but I feel like this one went by freakishly fast. We started off this month with a fun photo shoot of me and Robert in our wedding outfits, which you will get to see sooooon. We celebrated Valentine’s Day our favorite way: with Chinese takeout and a movie, followed by a Buffy marathon. We got hit with a windy snowstorm that night, so we were especially happy to be snuggled up in our apartment with nowhere to be. We also celebrated the 3 year anniversary of our first date on Tuesday night by going to our favorite restaurant in town, so that was a special treat for a weekday night. We ordered two kinds of pizza, two amazing pasta entrees and a white chocolate raspberry tiramisu for dessert, and we took most of that food home for leftovers because we can’t actually eat that much. I also got delightfully tipsy off of a limoncello/prosecco cocktail and a stellar tangerine mojito, while Robert was responsible and drove us home. It was a lovely anniversary, but still doesn’t live up to last year when Robert called into the Joy the Baker podcast for me. BUT – it seems as though February is the month for calling into podcasts, because we were lucky enough to get through to Kevin and Demi of Gilmore Guys (after 73 tries) to talk to them on their first call-in show! In that episode, titled “Call Our Name Vol. 1,” you can hear me and Robert chatting with them for 9 minutes (!) about Gilmore Girls (starting around the 42:30 mark) – we tell them about how Logan was accidentally a part of Robert’s bachelor party and I answer the question of whether Robert is a Dean, Jess or Logan. Those Gilmore Guys are fun. This weekend is my self-prescribed “Do Nothing Weekend,” so I have plans to do nothing productive except for a shopping spree with my mom and possibly some laundry. Here are some other things I’ve been loving: [Read more…]

As a kid I wanted to be an artist “when I grew up.” (Mission accomplished on that front.) After taking my high school introductory art classes, it became extremely clear that my destiny was to attend an art college, which I did. However it wasn’t until my sophomore year of college, during one of my illustration classes, that it hit me: In my little second-grader brain, when I thought about being an “artist” when I grew up, I was actually picturing myself as a children’s book illustrator. I had known for years that such a job would be a fun profession as an artist, but it didn’t dawn on me until that moment that it was what I had originally imagined for myself. [Read more…]

Oh hey, October! You’ve been fun. I had my first pumpkin spice latte, ate a lot of other things made with pumpkin, and then started making my own pumpkin spice cappuccinos, thanks to the homemade pumpkin spice latte syrup from Two Red Bowls and my FREE cappuccino maker that I won through Renee’s giveaway! (How many times can I type “pumpkin spice?”) I also met Joy the Baker, but more on that in a future post. If you’re interested in learning more about what I do for my day job, my hometown paper (and former workplace) ran a feature on me in their “Just Folks” column on Monday, which you can read here. Also, if you’re in the Lebanon area and would like to see my blog illustrations as real-life prints on paper, Robert and I are having our first ever joint art show at the Lebanon Valley Arts Council building (behind HACC in Lebanon). The reception will be part of the First Friday events on November 7th from about 5-9. In other news, here’s what else I’ve been up to this month: [Read more…]

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